Ceiling lifts for lifting and transporting patients have been in use for over twenty years. These types of patient lift are becoming more popular as they take up little space in a hospital or care home environment and are more efficient than floor lifts.
A ceiling lift can be described as a motor unit able to move along one or more rails arranged as a rail system, fixed to the ceiling. A flexible member such as a strap extends from the motor unit and is attached to a spreader bar. A patient sling or harness is attached to the spreader bar. An electrically motorized mechanism in the motor unit allows the user to extend or shorten the strap so as to raise or lower the spreader bar and with this to raise or lower the sling and any patient carried in the sling. The combination of rail system, motor unit, spreader bar and sling is often referred to as a ceiling lift system.
Some ceiling lift systems are said to be fixed (the motor unit is dedicated to one room) while others are said to be portable (the motor unit can move around from room to room).
Over the last decades the size (weight & morphology) of patients has increased, causing manufacturers of ceiling lift systems to develop solutions which better address the handling challenges larger patients pose. The initial response from manufacturers was to increase the lifting capacity of their existing products. Since then, patient handling techniques were developed, industry standards were established and user (patient and care givers) needs were better understood. It appears that there was room for devices which could do more than just having a greater lifting capacity and be able to transfer a patient in a fixed seated position. Indeed, users were in the need of a product with greater versatility.
One design adopted by manufacturers for handling patients of very large size (with a Body Mass Index above 40 or of weight above 160 kg, for example) has two motor units with two spreader bars which operate together. In one configuration, one of the motor units and its associated spreader bar supports/lifts the shoulder section of the patient, while the other motor unit and spreader bar supports/lifts the patient's leg section. A key benefit of such solution is the ability to provide a tilting function to sit or recline the patient during transfer, by creating a height difference between the spreader bars. Bringing the leg section spreader bar above the shoulder section spreader bar leads to a patient reclined position, while bringing the leg section spreader bar below the shoulder section spreader bar leads to a patient sitting position.
A tilting function can increase patient comfort and reduce caregiver effort to transfer a patient. Although the above-described solutions for very large patients can provide significant benefits, they can sometimes have the drawback of being suitable only to such patient morphology. Care institutions face the challenge of making the care environment, typically the patient rooms, as versatile as possible when it comes to the range of patients they can handle. As a result the patient environment should be able to accommodate very large patients but also very small patients. Otherwise, a room dedicated for very large sized patients can often be unoccupied for long periods of time.
Ceiling lift systems based on the use of two motor units and two spreader bars can be arranged to have the motor units able to move apart from one another, for example slidably located on a support rail, or can be fixed in position. While an arrangement which allows for the motor units to move apart can better accommodate a large patient, they can suffer from a loss of compactness of the apparatus and from loss of strength of the assembly. Fixed motor units can, however, only accommodate larger patients awkwardly.